Health professionals get educated on H1N1

by Ruth CampbellMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 7:00 pm, Friday, October 9, 2009

All health care workers and first-responders should get the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine, and everyone should practice handwashing and other etiquette to prevent the spread of the illness, health authority Dr. Nathan Galloway said Friday.

Galloway, who is responsible for the health department in Ector County, spoke to about 100 health care workers, students and social workers at the 25th annual Dr. William B. Furst Regional Health Care Conference at the Region 18 Education Service Center.

Although it's been said many times during this early-onset flu season, Galloway said his main message is practice:

- Good hand hygiene. Wash hands or use hand sanitizer after leaving a public place.

- Cough/sneeze etiquette. (Cough into your elbow, or a tissue and throw it away)

- No hugging or social kissing for people not in your household.

- Stay 6 feet away from people at large gatherings.

- Be prepared to get sick and stay home.

- Get flu shots — whether its shots or sprays.

- Don't give aspirin to kids if they get sick.

- Get a pneumonococcal vaccine as recommended by your doctor.

- Vaccinate all nursing home workers with seasonal and H1N1 shots.

Although H1N1 has been mild, if a surge were to occur, Texas' bed capacity is limited in this state of 24 million people. The state has 550 hospitals with 80,000 beds and a surge capacity of 9,000 beds, Galloway said.

The state is working to develop an inventory of medical supplies and equipment. "If we have much of a surge of seriously ill people, it's going to be a big problem," Galloway said, adding residents would have to prepare for bank and school closures, among other things.

The last swine flu vaccine in the 1970s was associated with Guillian-Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis, but Galloway said studies have since suggested the shot did not cause the syndrome.

Seasonal flu usually kills about 30,000 people a year. A combination of swine flu, seasonal flu and avian flu created novel H1N1 virus.

General characteristics include:

- Sudden onset.

- Incubation period of one to four days.

- Infectious period of five-plus days, starting one day before symptoms occur (longer in children).

- Symptoms are fever, headache, cough, sore throat, aches, and possibly vomiting and diarrhea (which Galloway said is an unusual characteristic found with H1N1).

- 50 percent of people with typical seasonal flu have contact with the health care system ranging from a doctor visit to hospital admission. Much of the flu this spring was H1N1.

Isolation of H1N1 this spring was in California about three weeks before the cases cropped up in Mexico. Health officials assumed it would be a pandemic, and it was a pandemic strain. Typically new strains come around every 50 years, he said.

It was thought it would cause many deaths, but it's turned out not to be that serious, Galloway said. "It has been a mild influenza much like seasonal flu," he said.

Predictions were vaccines would not be available, as is common with new flu strains, but they have arrived in several areas.

Fifty-one percent of those getting H1N1 are female. Young people 5-18 have been more susceptible.

Only 4 percent of people older than 45 are projected to get the disease, largely because they have been exposed to something like it before. However, many of these people have chronic diseases that make them more likely to die from flu.

-1918: Spanish flu highest posted the highest number of known flu deaths. More than 500,000 people died in the United States and 20-50 million people worldwide. It killed more people than the Black Plague, Galloway said.

-1957-58: Asian flu caused 70,000 deaths in the United States. It was first identified in China in late 1957 and spread to America by June 1957.

1968-69: Hong Kong flu caused 34,000 deaths in America. It was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the U.S. later that year.

1976 Swine flu: Galloway dubbed this "the pandemic that did not happen," possibly because of vaccine.